“Just what you think it is,” Josie told him, “Dump sites or trash pits, if you prefer, are an archeologist’s treasure trove. One of the things archeologists learned from them is that the Virginia Company in London bought provisions for the settlers on the cheap. The dump sites are full of the junk people threw out. The stuff that didn’t work. They even found helmets, breastplates … armor. Not a good sign.”

She watched us absorb that information. What must it have been like for the colonists to realize halfway around the world that they had been suckered into a deal made by a company motivated by profit rather than their well-being? That the owners wouldn’t be there to watch this colony fail? Their lives wouldn’t literally depend on it, so tough luck.

“The other thing they learned,” Josie went on, “is that the men who risked their lives to come to Jamestown weren’t lazy good-for-nothings who refused to work as some people had thought. Instead they discovered that this place was a hellhole and the men who came here weren’t prepared for what they found. It’s practically a miracle anyone survived.”

“Why was it a hellhole?” Quinn asked.

“A lot of reasons.” Josie started ticking them off on her fingers. “The worst drought in the last six hundred years coincided with the first six years of Jamestown. A lot of people starved to death. Then you’ve got the James, a salty tidal river that becomes even saltier in summer. That meant no digging deep wells. Anyone who didn’t starve probably died of dysentery or typhoid. Last but not least, two-thirds of the colonists who came here had never done manual labor before in their lives. The sailors from the three ships that brought them to America stayed on for six weeks and built their fort before they returned to England.”

“I didn’t know about the sailors building the fort,” I said.

“The Virginia Company of London didn’t send the cream of the crop,” she said. “The men who came were hustlers. Scrappers. Children. Servants. Second sons who had no hope of inheriting anything in England.”

“This building must be where they lived,” I said, indicating the open wooden structure surrounding us.

“The barracks. You wouldn’t have seen it in 2007,” Josie said. “When John Smith became governor he made the men build it so they weren’t sleeping outside in trenches as they had been doing. He also made the rule that anyone who didn’t work didn’t eat. It was pretty effective.”